


Colors Will Bleed

by Kari_Kurofai



Category: iCarly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They get married on a boat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colors Will Bleed

WARNING. This is not a happy fic. It has a happy beginning and a happy ending, but the things in the middle are not so. 

[Also, here is a complimentary playlist to go with it. ](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KOREW35O)

**Colors Will Bleed**

**  
**

They get married on a boat. There’s no proposal, not really, and no acceptance. They’re walking one of the many Waterfront piers when Freddie mentions, offhandedly, the fact that a ship’s captain can serve as a minister for weddings in international waters. Sam had been walking a few steps ahead of him when he says it and she freezes as the words leave his mouth. Freddie pauses when he notices her reaction and paces towards her, worried. When he does Sam only smiles, grabbing his hand between both of hers and tugging him towards the largest boat parked at the edge of the pier. 

“Where are we going?” 

“International waters, duh,” Sam points at the ship they stop in front of, “Where else.”

Freddie shakes his head and laughs, “Aren’t I supposed to get you a ring first?”

“Gross. No,” Sam frowns, “I wouldn’t wear it anyways.”

“Don’t I get to propose?”

Sam purses her lips and thinks about this for a moment before saying, “Nah, I think I’m good.”

Freddie covers his mouth with a hand to keep from laughing too hard, knowing that Sam might punch him if he does. “We need a witness, you know,” he points out around his snorts of laughter, to which Sam pouts. 

After a short phone call with a bit of hysterical screaming on the other end, they wait for Carly at a small grocery store perched above the pier. There’s a little gumball machine near the door and while Sam browses the shelves for Fat-Cakes (she says she’s getting a wedding cake but Freddie’s not an idiot) Freddie crouches down in front of the thing, realizing that it’s one for jewelry. It takes him fourteen tries to get a ring, a feat that leaves him holding a lot more braided bracelets and cheap necklaces than he’d like, all of which he dumps behind the machine when Sam comes back from her Fat-Cake escapades, shoving the little plastic container containing the ring into his coat pocket. 

“So, we’re really doing this?” he asks, stopping her from opening one of her newly acquired Fat-Cake packages.

“Yeah,” a look crosses her face as she says this, nervous and wary. Freddie knows it well. “Why … Don’t you, uh, want to?” There it is, in her eyes, the fear that has never left that someday he’ll push her away.

Freddie just smiles. “I was hoping to give you something nicer,” he says honestly. “With a white dress and a real cake and a ring.”

The nervous fear fades from Sam’s eyes and she flicks him on the nose, “First, I think I’d rather die than wear a dress like that. Second, thanks, but I don’t need it.”

He shakes his head and lifts his hands to her face, leaning in so their foreheads touch. “Then what do you need?” he asks softly.

“You, nub,” Sam replies. “Also Fat-Cakes.”

Freddie laughs, knowing he shouldn’t have expected anything else. It’s that moment that Carly arrives looking flushed and pissed as well, accompanied by Spencer who appears about in the same condition and promptly complains about not being invited.

They get married on a boat a mile out at sea, the lit up Seattle skyline just barely visible on the horizon as the sun sets. Freddie supposes the setting is supposed to be romantic, something to be remembered forever, but he knows the one memory he’s sure to walk away with is the look Sam gives him when he slips the stupid little gumball machine ring onto her finger. He’ll remember the way she covers her face with a hand, unable to quite hide the way her cheeks turn bright red and her eyes cloud with tears. Of course the moment is broken when Spencer lets out a sob and loudly blows his nose into a tissue, Carly patting him on the back but on the verge of tears herself. They get married on a boat, and in the end everyone laughs.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

It’s a Thursday when Freddie comes home to find the thing sitting on the kitchen counter. It rests on a napkin, lying there innocently amidst the day’s mail and a half eaten muffin that he left there that morning before he went to his classes. For a moment Freddie doesn’t realize what it is and just stares at it blankly, his eyes falling on the clearly marked little plus sign that’s just visible in the light that falls through their fifth floor window. His heart stops when it finally clicks in his head. He sets his backpack and laptop case down on the table and makes his way to through the apartment. 

The mess in the living room is impossible to miss, the pillows tossed about with some of their stuffing strewn across the carpet. The bathroom is worse, the shower curtains torn down and scattering of little boxes on the floor. Freddie doesn’t need to look at what the boxes are from, he can see their contents sitting in the sink, all bearing the same little plus sign the one in the kitchen had. 

He finds Sam in the bedroom. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed facing the wall. Freddie stands in the doorway and watches as she fidgets with the thin chain silver around her neck bearing the little gumball machine ring. She slips it over her finger absently and then off again, rolling it across her palm. Freddie stays quiet for a moment before he steps into the room. He knows she hears him come in by the way she freezes, her shoulders tensing up and the ring falling from her hands. 

“You’re not supposed to be home yet,” she whispers.

“My last class was canceled,” Freddie tells her, moving to stand at the opposite side of the bed. He puts one knee on the mattress but doesn’t go any closer, unsure of how she’ll react. “Were you going to tell me, or …”

Sam swallows and closes her fist around the ring on the end of the chain. “I … Don’t know,” she chokes out after a shaky breath. Freddie blinks, reeling inside like he’s been slapped in the face with the honesty behind that admission. For a second he remains where he is, struck dumb, before he crawls across the mattress to sit behind her. He wants to put a hand on her shoulder when he notices she’s trembling but something holds him back and instead he lets it hover just inches away.

“Why?” he asks. When she doesn’t present him an answer he lets an unspoken fear sink in, twist around inside him until he feels sick and then force it’s way out. “Is it … Is it not mine?”

At that Sam laughs, it’s a dark laugh as if there’s no real humor behind it, but it’s still a laugh. “Oh god, don’t be an idiot. Of course it’s yours, nub.” Freddie let’s his hand rest on her shoulder then and he pulls her backwards into his chest. “Why would you even think that?” She lifts a hand as she says it, wiggling her finger bearing the actual, official, silver band Freddie had gotten her for their first anniversary. 

Freddie chuckles, “Maybe because you didn’t call me. Because you just said you weren’t sure if you were going to tell me at all.” He wraps his arms around her and glides his fingers down to rest over her stomach. Sam stiffens almost instantly. “Did you …” He doesn’t want to ask it aloud but he doesn’t feel like he can deny her the choice, “Were you thinking of getting rid of it?” It hurts him to think that and as he does so he can’t help but clench his fingers into the fabric of her shirt. 

“I …” Sam hesitates before she breathes out a, “No,” almost too quietly for Freddie to hear. “No,” she repeats, louder, “Of course not. It’s just …” Freddie holds her tighter as she trembles in his arms, “I don’t think I can do it, you know? We’re supposed to learn how to be mothers from our own mothers, and look who I had as an example, look how I turned out. What if I mess it up like my mom did with me? I … I can’t …”

“You’ll do fine,” Freddie assures near her ear, “You have me.”

“Yeah, that’s reassuring when I look at your shining example of parentage,” Sam snorts.

“No one bottle fed me coffee,” Freddie points out and Sam pinches the back of his hand in response. 

Silence settles between them before Sam says, “Promise me that then. Promise me that you won’t leave.”

Freddie knows why she asks that of him, knows it because he’s not unfamiliar with the pains of a single mother and a father who doesn’t know his own child. “Of course,” he promises. “I would never, ever, do that to you.”

“Good,” Sam mutters, “Cause if you did I would hunt you down and punch you in the face. And then kill you.”

“Uh, great. Well you won’t have to.”

They laugh and lay on the mattress together, Freddie tracing circles across her stomach and Sam complaining that it tickles.

OoOoOoOoO

He graduates five months later and Sam makes fun of him for both of his degrees even as she insists they get the official looking certificates framed. They call Carly and promise to send pictures of the ceremony while Sam asks if ugly college graduation robes can sell for anything on eBay. Freddie knows that he’ll find them later tucked away in a box with the one’s they wore for high school, however, despite her complaints. Carly tells them she got the ultrasound video the other day in her email and says she’s already booked her plane ticket for the week of the due date. Sam rolls her eyes and mutters that it’s not that big of a deal. 

They keep the phone on speaker for nearly an hour while Carly tells them about the episode of the TV drama she filmed that week and how one of her costars keeps buying her lunch. Sam keeps interrupting to tell her to jump him and be done with it. Freddie pretends he doesn’t hear that. When they finally hang up for the night Sam stretches out on the sofa and Freddie lays his head on her stomach.

“I can hear a heartbeat,” he tells her after a few minutes and Sam just smiles.

“A strong one I bet, considering that it spent most of the graduation sitting on my bladder. I’ve never had to pee so bad in my life.”

“Thank you,” Freddie deadpans, “For that lovely information.”

“It’s your fault.”

“Glad to be of service.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

It’s two weeks too early when Sam goes into labor. Two weeks too early, too wrong. Freddie’s watching the latest Shelby Marx match on TV when Sam comes out of the kitchen, white faced with a hand extended towards him. “Um,” she says quietly, “When my water breaks is there supposed to be blood?” Freddie stands  and takes the hand, his thumbs going over the crimson that streaks her fingers.

“No,” he says as he reaches for his phone, “Not that much.” It takes less than a minute for him to call an ambulance, twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive, and twenty more for it to get to the hospital. Too many minutes too long. 

Freddie tries to tell her that everything’s going to be okay. He says it over and over every minute, every second, trying to convince himself that it will be. Except that there’s blood, and the bleeding doesn’t stop. It’s when Sam starts to scream that he knows that everything is not going to be okay. Sam’s supposed to be the strong one, the one who grins and bears it.

“It hurts,” she chokes out as he holds her hands between his, unable to feel his fingers in the tightness of her grip. 

“It’ll be okay,” he whispers. He knows she doesn’t believe him, knows she knows the little tells of his lies better than she knows the lifelines on her own hands. But he says it anyways. “It’s going to be okay.”

Except that it’s not okay. The baby is twisted up in it’s own umbilical cord and facing the wrong way, too difficult to get to via C-section without serious risk. As it stands Freddie’s pulled aside and told it’s likely the child will be stillborn after such a difficult birth. 

But hours later, after too much blood and too much time, they’re rewarded with a cry. For a moment Freddie lets himself feel relief, let’s his heart soar as the doctor cuts the umbilical cord that nearly killed the baby and wraps it up for Freddie to hold. 

“It’s a girl,” he tells Sam, smiling shakily as he balances the baby against his chest with one arm, his other hand still wrapped around hers. “She’s got your eyes.”

“Don’t give her a stupid name,” Sam whispers. It’s those words that jerk Freddie out of his short period of bliss. It takes him less than a second to realize something’s terribly wrong. Sam smiles at him with glazed eyes and when he squeezes her hand she barely twitches her fingers in his grip. 

“Hey, no, no, no,” he says, “You’re supposed to be the strong one, Sammy. Come on. You just need some rest.”

“Freddie-”

“Shhh, it’ll be okay.” Lies. He pretends that they’re not and he clutches her hand tighter as he says them. 

“I-”

“No, stop.” Nurses are rushing around him, one of them trying to take the crying infant from his arms while another tries to pull him away from the hospital bed.  “Please,” he begs, unsure of whether he’s pleading with Sam or some cruel higher power. “Don’t do this to me, please. You’re supposed to be the strong one. Please.”

“-Hate you.”

She smiles as she says it and Freddie wants to smile too, wants to remember fire escapes and first kisses and words that bore no meaning. But he can’t because her fingers are slipping out of his and there’s the long echoing single beep of a heart monitor that doesn’t vary. The sound stretches out, unwavering in it’s single unchanging tone the moment Freddie realizes that Sam’s not looking at him anymore, isn’t looking at anything at all.

That’s the moment he screams. It’s a thousand times worse than Sam’s screams from before and it rips him apart. He screams because it’s not supposed to be like this. They didn’t fight and share first kisses and struggle to stay at each other’s side, to admit they cared after years of denying, for it to end this way. So he screams until he has no air left to scream with, until he sways where he stands because the heart monitor still sounds with it’s unending straight line and he can’t breath on his own anymore. He feels like he’s going to fall, going to refuse to suck in another breath to keep himself standing on this earth because there’s no point any longer. Except that he’s still holding the baby. The baby who’s crying louder than him and it’s for that reason, and that reason alone, that Freddie remembers how to breath, forces himself to breath because he promised her, promised, that he wouldn’t leave

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

He names her Carina. It’s a good name, he thinks, in both sound and in meaning. Carina who is and will be beloved and who was born from someone beloved. Freddie doesn’t know if he’ll ever tell her that’s why he chose it.

Carly quits the show she’s working on, forcibly rips up the contract when they try to use it against her, and stays with Freddie for the whole first year. She takes are of Carina, feeding her, changing her, holding her when she get’s fussy, and doesn’t comment on the fact that Freddie barely even leaves his room to eat, let alone to see his own child. She doesn’t say anything because there’s nothing she can say, nothing she would even if there were words to properly say it. There are only so many times a person can hear “I’m sorry,” before it loses it’s meaning, so many times they can get flowers and condolence cards in the mail before they end up as smashed vases, crumpled petals, and torn pieces of paper.

But when Carina cries in the middle of the night it’s always Freddie who calms her down, who rocks her back to sleep and whispers things to her Carly doesn’t listen to because she feels she has no right to hear them. She hovers in the hall, wondering how long it’s been since he’s spoken at all with every time his voice breaks. Sometimes she wants to tell him it’s been hard on her too, that he’s not the only one who lost Sam, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because every time his voice breaks he doesn’t stop, whispered songs and words for the one thing he feels he has left. Carly wishes she could remind him that she’s still there too, except she knows it’s not the same thing. So she stays quiet and watches him rock Carina back to sleep, her tiny fingers curled around one of his over a silver band.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

When Carina turns four Freddie gives her a thin chained necklace with a cheap gumball machine ring hanging from it. Carly pretends not to recognize it when he smiles and does the clasp around his daughter’s neck for her, watching her admire the little trinket as if it’s the most precious thing in the world. In many ways it is.

Freddie’s better now, at least to an outsider. He smiles more, laughs sometimes, and spends every waking hour with Carina, talking to her, reading to her, showing her old pictures in a photo album that hasn’t been touched in years. At night he designs websites for clients, a minimal job to what he could be doing with his degrees, but it’s enough to get by. 

They take a trip for that birthday, the three of them, to the new studio Carly works at. It’s a smaller corporation, local only with cheesy daytime soaps, but that’s okay. They spend the day in the city where Carina has never been before outside the containment of a car, and then a few hours at the zoo. 

When night starts to fall Carly parks at a McDonalds and let’s Carina run around in the play area while Freddie wanders off. The restaurant is only a few blocks from the cemetery. When Carina asks where’s he’s gone Carly just says he had some important things to do because she knows Freddie doesn’t want his daughter to understand, doesn’t want her to realize that her birthday, which should be happy, also bears a darker marker in time. Carly knows that he’ll sit on the grass until after the sun goes down, not saying anything. She knows he’ll bring flowers and apologize because Sam would be mad at him for doing so, knows that he’ll run his fingers over the name on the marble stone, knows that he’ll cry because he doesn’t let himself do so on any other day. She’s heard him say that, yearly, monthly, weekly, daily.

“You’re the strong one now,” he tells himself when he thinks Carly can’t hear him, words whispered  because he needs someone, anyone, even himself, to remind him to keep breathing.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

“I hafta go to school?”

“Yes,” Freddie says as he zips up Carina’s coat. “You’ll have a lot of fun and I’ll pick you up at 11:45, so it’s not that long.”

“Will I get to color?”

“I’m sure you will.”

“An’ snack?”

Freddie laughs, “Yes.”

“An,’ an’ nap?”

At this Freddie blinks and stops, his fingers still tangled in her shoelaces in the midst of tying them. “Huh? You want to nap? You hate naps.”

Carina nods, rubbing a fist over her eyes, “ ‘M sleepy.”

Freddie frowns and puts a hand to her forehead. “No school today, actually. You’ve got a little bit of a fever.”

It’s a struggle to actually get her in to bed as even a disobedient five year old knows the importance of the first day of school. In the end Freddie just bundles her up in a blanket and let’s her lay on the sofa with the TV on. He spends most of the day curled up on the couch with her, her head in his lap while she sleeps and his hand on her forehead as he waits for her fever to break.

Except that it doesn’t break. It’s just past two when Freddie gets out the thermometer, frowning when it reads a hundred and two and rising. He’s had fevers that high in his lifetime, higher even. But Carina is a little, still growing, five year old girl and this is the highest fever she’s ever had. He tells himself not to worry, that it’s just a fever, a cold. When she breaks a hundred and four Freddie drives her to the Children’s Hospital. 

“They say it’s just a fever,” Carly tells him when she meets him in the waiting room. Freddie wants so very badly to believe her. 

It’s just after ten when it starts to rain, a it’s less than a half hour later that the nurse tells Freddie that Carina’s fever is at a hundred and six. It’s a little over an hour to midnight when Freddie leaves the hospital running and Carly doesn’t stop him.

He runs in the rain, through the city and the puddles that collect there until every inch of his body is soaked to the bone, and he doesn’t stop. He runs until there is no more city, until it’s just lights behind him, until he’s standing on the edge of an expanse of grass that is starting to turn brown with the fall air, despite the rain. It’s only then that he stops running. In the darkness  and the rain it takes him longer than usual to navigate the twisting paths of headstones, but if he closed his eyes he knows he could find it even then.

When he does find it he falls to his knees into the mud, his fists tearing into the grass at it’s base as he sucks in breath after breath, trying to remember how to breath. “Please,” he gasps out, the word barely audible over the sound of the rain that streaks down the marble, over the name, and washes into the mud and grass where he’s fallen. “Please, Sam, don’t let them take her, too. Please.”

Freddie wants to believe she can hear him, that she can help him, that she cares, but belief is not reality. Belief doesn’t matter. “Please, Sam! You can’t! If I lose her too I-” He sobs, the words getting caught in his throat. “Please … Sammy. Please.” Freddie leans his head against the stone and tries to remember how to breath, tries to remember why breathing is worth it. 

Breathing is worth it because of fights and fire escapes, first kisses and mental hospitals, web shows and gumball machine rings. “You can’t! You can’t let them, Sam! Please!”

The rain doesn’t stop.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Carina’s fever starts to go down at four in the morning, a half hour after Freddie gets back to the hospital, soaked and covered in mud. Carly doesn’t ask where he’s been, doesn’t really want to know. Freddie’s allowed to take Carina home that afternoon and Carly leaves them to go to work, telling Carina she’ll bring her back a new coloring book. 

Freddie walks Carina out to the parking lot, holding her hand that isn’t full of the bright blue stuffed bear one of the nurses gave her. She says she wants to go to school the next day, Freddie tries to tell her that she needs a few days of rest just to be sure she’s okay before realizing he sounds a little too much like his mother. He laughs at the thought and says if she waits to go to school until next week they can go to the zoo.

They’re not even halfway to the car yet when Carina falls. It’s so sudden Freddie doesn’t realize it’s happening until her hand is slipping from his as her legs give out from under her. He dives to catch her, his hand under her head just inches before it hits the sidewalk. He pulls her into his lap and cradles her there. It takes him a moment to scream for help, to remember they're at a hospital as his daughter heaves for breath in his arms, her face flushed and her eyes glazed over. Sam’s eyes. Freddie presses his forehead to hers, holding her close. There’s no fever, but she’s still sick, still fading in his arms faster than a doctor or a nurse can get there, he can see them running down the sidewalk towards him and knows they won’t reach him in time. So he holds her to him, holds her close like the day she was born, Sam’s eyes and her curls with his hair, and wonders why this is happening.

“Because sometimes, bad things happen to good people.”

Freddie looks up. A little man is sitting on the grass off to the side of the pavement Freddie’s kneeling on, a chicken wing in his hand. He stares at Freddie as if he’s a character in a film, someone to be watched as their life goes to pieces before leaving a theater to carry on with his own. “Is this,” Freddie says through gritted teeth, “Funny to you?”

“No,” the man shakes his head before resting it against his palm. “Not at all. You just asked a question and I answered.” He waves the chicken wing around absently as if it’s nothing to be concerned about. 

“You answered nothing!” Freddie hisses. “You gave me the same explanation mothers tell their children when they fall down on the playground!”

The man considers this for a moment, “It’s about the same concept. Except when you fall on a playground you have the chance to get up.” He tilts his head to the side and gestures around them, “In most situations like this, you don’t. This is that chance.”

For the first time Freddie realizes that something is off. The blades of grass are bent as if an absent wind had been midway through ruffling them, a leaf hovers in the air but doesn’t fall, and when he looks down at Carina her stillness is like a single frame of a film reel rather than death. “What …”

“I can give you a chance,” the man says, holding up a finger. “One. One chance. If you refuse it time will move forward and, well,” he frowns, “I think you know what will happen.”

“A chance for what?” Freddie asks, “Who are you to offer me anything?”

The man smiles slightly, “The name’s Mitch.”

Honestly, the name means nothing to Freddie, so he just nods because he doesn’t know what else to do. “What’s … What sort of chance.”

“A chance to change things,” Mitch says lightly, “Because sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes they were never meant to. So if you want, I can give you another chance. But it has a price.”

“Anything,” Freddie says.

Mitch narrows his eyes, “Don’t be too hasty. Anything?” He points to Carina, “What if I asked you to give up her? What if she was the price for your happily ever after?”

Freddie inhales and glances down at Carina, at her eyes, still open, the same as Sam’s, at her hair like her father’s that falls over his fingers as he holds her, at the gumball machine ring hanging around her neck. “No,” he says quietly. 

“That’s what I thought,” Mitch smirks. “But there’s only a few other things valuable enough to pay the price for turning back time. Things have to be balanced out, you know. Equivalent exchange.” He pauses, a finger to his chin, “You could give me your Love. Your Love for Sam.”

“Wha-”

“You do still love her, don’t you?”

“I never stopped!” Freddie snaps. 

Mitch considers this for a moment before shaking his head, “No, I don’t think I can take that. Maybe … Your memories.”

“My memories?”

“Of this time plane, of everything that happens after the point I will take you back to,” Mitch explained. “You’ll forget this moment, the day your daughter was born, the day you got married, and everything in between. All of it.”

Freddie purses his lips, “Then how am I supposed to stop any of this happening?”

“You don’t.”

“But-”

Mitch snorts, standing up and pacing over to him, “I’m giving you a chance here, kid. I can’t promise bad things won’t happen, but I can promise that it will be worth it, no matter what happens.”

“And why is that?” Freddie doesn’t believe him, doesn’t believe living through this again, any of it, is worth anything.

“Because you’ll get to see Sam again.”

And that’s all Freddie needs to hear. Mitch puts two fingers to his forehead and suddenly he’s falling, falling backwards through space and time. Carina slips out of his arms and for a moment he tries to reach for her before he stops himself. She’s part of a future, a memory, he has to let go of. She’s a piece he didn’t give up for this chance, so when he loses his grip on her he knows he’ll see her again. He falls, and falls, and falls, through weeks and months and years, until memories and colors bleed together and he finds that he can stand again, his feet touching solid ground.

When he opens his eyes he’s standing over his old tech cart. His surroundings are freeze-framed in time, a crowd of mental hospital patients hovering around tables and near the far wall, Carly holding a camera to his right, and Sam standing just a few feet away from him, her arms half raised as if she’s in the middle of an outburst. He remembers this moment, he remembers what happens, what he does, what comes from that action and everything after.

“Is this the choice?”

Mitch is perched on one of the tables not far away, a half eaten chicken wing still in his hand. “It is,” he replies.

“And if I … If I kiss her, if I tell her we’re both insane, will she … In the future, will it be the same?” Freddie stares down at the Pearpad in his hands, at his sixteen year old body and his own face reflected on the screen. 

“Nothing is for certain,” Mitch says honestly. “But if you’re too scared of the possibility you can still walk away. The moment you make your choice you’ll forget that future.” He reaches into his pocket as he finishes off his chicken wing and pulls out a pack of cards. “Think of it like this, the future is like a deck of cards. Which one will you draw?”

Time starts again. Freddie sets the Pearpad down on the cart, his mind racing as he does so. He has a split second to chose, a heartbeat to decide before he forgets everything.

“You want to humiliate me on the web in front of millions of people, go ahead and just do it. I don’t care.”

There was never any choice. Freddie turns and steps towards her, letting himself forget the years and the pain as he does so because he knew, all along, that there was no choice, not really. 

“Get back at me for all the mean things I’ve sa-”

He reaches for her and lets himself forget, his hands falling to her waist as he pulls her close to him and kisses her. There was never any real choice because how could he chose anyone but her?

“You mean that?” She asks when he pulls away.

Freddie smiles and nods, “Mmhhmm,” because they’re sixteen again and they have their whole lives still ahead of them. “So I guess we’re both insane.”

Somewhere in the back of the room Mitch draws a card from his deck and smiles, tossing it to the ground. It floats to the floor and comes to rest out of sight under one of the tables to later be swept beneath one of the sofas where it will gather dust and fade until the ace of hearts isn’t visible anymore.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Freddie never remembers, is never meant to, because it’s a timeline erased from history, a dark story to be forgotten and replaced with a lighter one. A story of fighting, first kisses, and fire escapes.

They still get married on a boat, and Freddie still smiles and knows that the moment he slips that stupid gumball machine ring onto Sam’s finger will be etched into his mind forever. He still gives her a real ring on their first anniversary, he still finds out she’s pregnant on a Thursday, and he still listen’s to the baby’s heartbeat the day he graduates from college where he still gets two degrees and Sam still makes fun of him.

This time, though, their daughter is born on her due date and he sits on the edge of Sam’s hospital bed and holds her in his arms while Sam sleeps. Just sleeps. They rock her to sleep together when she cries at night, Carly comes over for Christmas and keeps her big TV network job, the gumball machine ring stays on it’s chain around Sam’s neck, and for Carina’s fourth birthday she gets a tricycle. Her first day of school is also the day Sam calls Freddie at work to tell him they’re going to need a bigger apartment, or maybe even a house, because they’re nine months away from needing a third bedroom. 

They don’t remember the timeline that disappeared, they don’t need to. Every moment that replaces it is laughter and bickering and happiness because they only had one choice, and they happened to draw the right card.

**RANDOM AUTHOR RAMBLE**

Okay, so in case you didn’t listen when I said I’d make a fic based on this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yty3MCQMpFg&list=PL812F7049208222D1&index=164 ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yty3MCQMpFg&list=PL812F7049208222D1&index=164%C2%A0)

Here it is again to show you where I got the inspiration from. Also, in case you have never seen iChristmas, Mitch is the angel from iChristmas. There you go. Tie ins. What now. Also, if I didn’t make you cry at least once I have failed as a writer, good day to you.

  



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